


Dead Weight

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Gen, and season one John, debatably sympathetic John Winchester, he's a shitty parent but that's just canon, implied PTSD, my attempt to bridge the gap between s5e15 John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 03:13:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1842208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary is the only thing that makes John feel alive. Even after she dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Weight

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to the lovely yet_intrepid for her editing wisdom (and also for giving me the title <3)

Mothers often say that the most important time in their lives are the births of their children. John never believed that. Not even after he became a father himself.

He was glad when Mary got pregnant. He was happy the day they got hitched. He grinned like a fool they day they met. But the day his son was born, he was exhausted. Worn out. And, God help him, scared.

He’d never felt so helpless before.

It hadn’t been an easy birth and even though nothing really went wrong, even though they were in a hospital with doctors who charged so damn much they oughta know at least something about keeping people alive, even though at the end of it Mary was soft and glowing with a little ball of blankets in her arms, they’d gone through so much pain to get there. _She’d_ gone through so much pain. And John had just stood there, helpless, useless, in the way of everything. Dead weight.

His first thought when he held that boy, that bundle of love and baby and Mary in his arms? He hated it. He fucking hated his own child. _Mary’s_ child. He hated that you had to spill so much blood to make a life. He hated that the world was such a crock of shit, he couldn’t guarantee his own son goddamn anything. He hated that there were bills to pay and doctors to leech up money and jobs to do and before he knew it his boy was being pried out of his arms and passed around like a hot potato.

He hated everything so much he was numb to it.

He needed a drink, so he went out and got one. And then a few more for good measure.

Mary seems to have forgot the pain. She even wants another kid. Goddamn, but John can’t stomach the thought of going through it again, with no way even to take the burden off her shoulders, take her pain for his own. What good is a husband if he can’t even do that much? He’s supposed to protect her. He’d take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. How is he supposed to watch her suffer and just go along with it, just for the sake of some person who isn’t even a person yet, just an idea, just another mouth he can’t afford to feed?

John’s taking more hours at the garage. He has to, to get food on the table. But it’s driving him crazy. So long away from Mary, so long around these people he’s known most of his life but, at the same time, he barely knows at all. They’ve all changed since he went away. Or maybe they’re the same, and he’s the one that’s broken. He feels weightless and heavy at the same time, most days. Like he’s touching the whole world through a pair of thick gloves.

He’s barely held his son since that first time. Barely even seen him. He fakes smiles but he knows Mary’s seeing through them. She never used to. She used to say such nice things about him. She called him a kind man, a brave man, good. John would never touch booze again if he could put those words in a bottle, drink them down in short, hard gulps like lifeblood or good scotch. Mary thought he was kind, and so he was. He could be. For as long as those words rang in his head, and her eyes followed him around the room in waltzing circles, he could be anything she told him to be. 

And then there are days he can’t get out of bed, and days he drinks too much and those are most days if he’s being honest, and days he goes out of his head and is so filled up with blood and liquor and bullets there’s no room for anything else. Mary comes to him like an angel, light in her hair and toothpaste on her breath, like the only real, solid thing in the world. She’s the only thing that pulls him out of it. Except now she has the baby to think of, and when John gets bad she goes into the nursery and locks the door.

She’s not telling him to be anything now. She’s not looking at him. Her arms are full of babies and her lips coo lullabies even in her sleep.

John doesn’t know why it took so long, eight years and a baby to realize that the man she married wasn’t a good boy from Kansas, wasn’t an angel made to keep her safe at night, was just a man, like other men, shitty and drunk and with more nightmares than he had dreams.

John doesn’t know why he drinks so much, why the whiskey afterburn is the only thing that chases out the fire under his skin. He doesn’t know why he does half the things he does. He’s numb and raw at the same time, like a splinter stabbed into a calloused hand. He can tug and tear at it all he likes, but nothing is ever gonna get that old wound free.

He doesn’t know why anything happens anymore.

But there’s one night he comes back from the garage. Dead tired with a cramp in his left leg, an ankle that protests every stab of the accelerator on the drive home. It’s been a long day, a hard day, the kinda day you just grit your jaw and get through. He walks through the door of his house like a man crawling for salvation on his hands and knees. All he wants is a hot meal, a warm bed, and Mary.

So of course the house is empty when he opens the door.

Mary’s gone. So’s the kid. Pot’s on the stove, but no plates on the table.

Kitchen window’s open. The breeze blows in, carries with it the sound of laughing.

John’s furious for a moment. So angry he sees red. How dare they, how fucking dare this sorry rotten world have laughter in it. Probably one of those goddamn hippie teenagers smoking pot on his land. He bursts out onto the back porch with his fists up, his eyes glaring, hot wet fury aching in his throat.

And he freezes in the doorway, struck by what he sees.

Mary’s out there in the grass. Blond hair loose and hanging like a halo in the sun. A white shirt rings her elbows and billows out like laundry, her skinny arms like clotheslines, her whole body built to float away into a cloudless Kansas sky.

She holds tiny hands in hers. Small fat toddler hands of her boy, _his_ boy. Dean takes tiny baby steps. Mary holds him steady. She laughs and laughs and laughs as she does.

She’s beautiful. More beautiful than she’s ever been before. _Their son_ is beautiful. The whole world is beauty and light and John knows it’s gonna fade, is gonna rush away like so much cloud into that wide and unforgiving sky, but for the moment, she’s happy. For the moment, everything is happy.

John feels like lead. Can’t bring himself to move or speak. He’s taking the picture, locked behind the camera lens—if he crosses into frame now, he’ll be nothing more than a dark blur in a corner. He’s not needed here.

He makes a move to go inside, but Mary hears his creaking on the old porch wood. She looks up, smiles. Beckons.

Invitation.

John crosses over into the hot summer light. His arms throw themselves wide without him meaning to, like he’s trying to embrace Mary and the whole Earth with her.

His boy looks up. Sees him. His whole fucking face lights up with that smile only babies have, that smile that’s so simple, so easy, that slips into place behind his eyes like he’s never known anything but joy.

“Da!” he says, or John thinks he says, and before John knows it he’s crouching down, getting level with his son and the tangle of summer weeds.

And then this incredible thing happens. This amazing miracle thing. Mary lets go of Dean’s hands and he barely wobbles, barely notices, just toddles forward out of the sun and into John’s arms.

He curls up, snuggles into John’s arms and it’s a bit like holding a cat, and a bit like holding Mary, and mostly like nothing else in the world. He’s so tiny, so fragile, but he’s not that little lump of flannel and frustrated crying John brought home all those months ago. No, he’s squirming and hot and heavy and alive.

 _I have a son,_ John realizes. And it’s funny but he’s never thought that before. It’s not another mouth to feed or a thing in Mary’s arms—it’s not an _it_ at all. It’s his boy. His Dean. A real, live, little person who’s gonna grow up one day, who’s already growing up every day.

Dean, his son, a boy who looks up to him, who needs him, who’s as real as Mary and loves him without trying.

“Dad,” Dean says, and the world flips right over. Or maybe flips back upside right. John’s not falling into some dark space, not distant, not half-dead—he’s here. He’s real.

He’s a father to a little boy. A little boy that needs a father so he can grow up into a man.

Mary puts a hand on his shoulder. John holds Dean tightly, gently, fiercely. He hides his eyes in Dean’s soft blond fluffs of hair. He’s not crying. But if he was, nobody would ever have to know.

“I’m here, Dean,” John says. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”

***

It’s been a tough case. The hard kind that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go until it’s well and buried. John’s drenched in sweat, mud, so goddamn tired he’s about to keel over right behind the steering wheel. But he knows he can’t. He’s gotta get home.

Home.

Home is not a motel room. Home is not fifty bucks a night and free ice in the hallway. Home is not popcorn ceilings and a mini fridge and a condom wrapper in the trash under Sammy’s used diapers.

But there are no homes without Mary, not even the big hollow houses on television. John can make do with this.

At least for a few more years.

The lock fights him and the door sticks as he pushes it open. Dean and Sammy should still be asleep where he left them, tangled up in the nest of sheets Dean tore off the second mattress. There’s no way they’ll be up this early.

Except they are.

John throws open the door and there’s a light on, there’s Dean and Sam on the floor awake and playing or some shit. Dean’s doing that thing where he’s muttering really quietly to himself. John’s never sure what he’s talking about, if he’s telling a story or trying to have a conversation with his baby brother or what. All he knows is that it’s worrying. But Hell, it’s better than when Dean isn’t talking at all.

“You know what time it is?”

Dean looks up, sticks him with that goddamn rabbit-in-the-headlights nine-mile stare.

“It’s five in the morning,” John says, shutting the door with a snap that makes Dean flinch. “What’re you doing up before the sun’s up, boy?”

“Sammy wet the bed,” Dean says, pointing.

Sam’s still in his diaper, clawing his way up the side of John’s bed with shaky little legs. Dean’s not wearing pants, is sitting ass-naked on grody motel carpet. He stares at John hard, just a bit of red in his cheeks.

John just wants a shower and some whiskey and a good four hour’s sleep. But since when has the world given John Winchester what he wants?

“Then you and Sam can sleep in my bed,” John says. Dean scrambles to his feet. “But you’re putting your pants on first.”

“They’re all wet,” Dean says quickly.

“Then get a new pair,” John says. “Jesus.”

John doesn’t know how he manages it, dragging his exhausted hands through duffle bags looking for something Dean can wear. He gives up on finding him underwear and just tosses him a pair of sweatpants. They’re new but already a little short in the ankle. Goddamn but kids grow fast.

“Go to sleep,” John tells him, and shuffles into the bathroom before he keels over on the floor.

He doesn’t really shower, just strips and stands under the water for a while. It’s hot but not quite hot enough. He stumbles back out five, ten, twenty minutes later, every part of him aching and ready for sleep.

But the light’s still on. Dean’s still up, sitting Indian style on the bed, staring at the TV.

“What’d I just tell you?” John says, and Dean snaps to attention. “Get under the covers and go to bed right now Dean.” John looks around at the floor in front of him. “Where’s Sammy?”

Dean points. John turns and there’s Sam, playing in the mess John left of one of the duffle bags. John marches over and yanks him up.

“Bed,” he says.

“No!” Sam squirms and cries and swings his fists. “No no no!”

He’s still crying when John finally lies down under the covers. It’s not much of a rest because his arms are full of screaming toddler. Sammy doesn’t calm down, not even when John rubs at his back, not even when Dean crawls over to comfort him. He just cries and cries.

John’s had enough. He rolls over and sets Sam down on the ground. The little bastard takes off before his feet hit the floor.

“Dad.” Dean pokes at him. “Dad, I wanna stay up too. S’not _fair,_ Dad.”

Nothing is fucking _fair._

“Fine!” John snaps. “Fine! Do whatever the fuck you want! Just stay _quiet._ ”

Dean rolls out of the bed. John crams his face into a pillow until the light and the sounds and the whole world fades into the dark, cool space behind his eyelids.

Darkness shouldn’t be a comfort to him. Not now that he knows what he knows about the things that lurk and creep and steal from the shadows. But in the darkness, it’s so much easier to pretend he’s back at home with Mary beside him.

She’s dead. He knows she’s dead. But her ghost feels more real to him than his own two hands, most days.

He thinks about curling up. Hiding under the sheets like a grub under six feet of earth. Putting his hands over his ears and staying in that limbo, that dreamy peace until he rots. It might be easy. It might be nice.

Of course, he won’t give up. Not yet. He’s got things to do. Boys to take care of. Monsters to kill.

One day, though. Maybe in two years or maybe in twenty, one day he’ll rid the world of the scummy son of a bitch that killed his wife. And then he can be done. Finished. He’ll fall into Mary’s arms in a gentle little motion. John doesn’t believe in Heaven, but he believes in all his bones that Mary’s still out there. There, just out of his reach. Waiting.

The boys whisper to each other like ants scurrying across a picnic table. Sammy laughs, and Dean says, “Look, Dad—!”

“ _Quiet!_ ” John barks.

And they don’t wake him up again.

Maybe they go to sleep after that. Maybe they don’t. Maybe somewhere in that dark Sam plays alone till dawn, and somewhere Dean sits with Mary, and somewhere the dead stir restless in their sleep.

Either way John dreams, in fits and starts, of things caught halfway between the living and the gone.

**Author's Note:**

> If you also have complicated grumbly feelings about John Winchester, feel free to contact me at jellyfishline.tumblr.com


End file.
